darkening

darkening is the present participle and gerund of darken.

Meaning of darken

Verb

darken (third-person singular simple present darkens, present participle darkening, simple past and past participle darkened)

(transitive) To make dark or darker by reducing light.
- […] they [locusts] covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 10:15
Synonyms:

bedark, blacken, endark, swarten
(intransitive) To become dark or darker (having less light).
- […] the owl and the bat flew round the darkening trees:1783, William Blake, “The Couch of Death”, in Richard Herne Shepherd, editor, Poetical Sketches, London: Basil Montagu Pickering, published 1868, page 84
Synonyms:

blacken, mirken, swarten
(impersonal) To get dark (referring to the sky, either in the evening or as a result of cloud).
- Well, I must go in now; and you too: it darkens.1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter XV, in Jane Eyre. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 289
Synonyms:

dusk
(transitive) To make dark or darker in colour.
- She puts on lipstick and darkens her eyebrows, which are now very scanty […]2009, Alice Munro, “Free Radicals”, in Too Much Happiness, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, page 118
(intransitive) To become dark or darker in colour.
- The lovely hair had lost its rose-gold glimmer, and had darkened to rose-brown […]1979, Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment, New York: Fawcett Crest, Book 4, Chapter 4, p. 405
Synonyms:

darkle
(transitive) To render gloomy, darker in mood.
- With these forced thoughts, I prithee, darken not
  The mirth o’ the feast.c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
Synonyms:

begloom, bring down, dispirit, aggrieve, attrist, begrieve, besorrow, grieve, pain, come down on

See all 12 meanings of darken

Noun

darkening (countable and uncountable, plural darkenings)

The act of something becoming darker.
- At last the first glimpse from a bridge of an open-top red bus, and a noticeable darkening of the atmosphere from the smoke of London: then the increasingly dingy stations with double-barrel names, set amid what has always been to me the outstanding feature of the "Premier Line" approach to...1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 704
- NEGATIVE FLASHES — Brief darkenings of a light that is otherwise steadily on.1978, Gerald Leonard Howett, Kenneth Low Kelly, E. Thomas Pierce, Emergency vehicle warning lights: state of the art

Forms of darkening

plural	darkenings

Words formed from darkening

Phrases with darkening

Questions about darkening

What does darkening mean?: Darkening means the act of something becoming darker.
What is darkening the present participle and gerund of?: Darkening is the present participle and gerund of darken.
What part of speech is darkening?: Darkening is a noun.
What is the plural of darkening?: The plural of darkening is darkenings.

Words near darkening in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: darkening (page history and authors); darken (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “darkening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/darkening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.